@fondword
It’s been a habit for as long as Yang can remember. Dad always said it was because sometimes her excess energy pooled in her feet and woke up when she lay down. Sometimes it’s a few hours into her sleep, other times she can’t get to sleep at all, but it always ends in the same thing.
Yang, barefooted, alone and in her pyjamas padding around the house. Most nights her travels take her all the way outside, and that’s where she finds herself sitting now; on the stairs of their home like a smoker at a bar minus the cigarette and the beer breath. (She’s a little young for that yet, and sucks fresh air into her nostrils instead.)
There’s something white at the corner of her eyes, though, and it’s panic that seizes her heart at first. Grimm? They shouldn’t be so close to the house, they never usually come this far. Squinting into the gloom, Yang considers calling for her dad, but childish curiosity wins out over caution, and she creeps quietly across the grass towards the treeline.
There it is again, a swish of white too fast for her to pinpoint what it is. But it seemed to be glowing.
“HEY.” She barked, fists clenching at her sides. If there was a grimm in their garden, she’d make sure it left with a few broken limbs. “Come out where I can see ya!”
The return of a fledgling babe to her nest had not been the end. Try though Aras had, hardening his heart like a fort, his mind had been aflame with thoughts of the red-cloaked cub. Humanity had been friend and foe to the earth as long as they had walked it, ignorant to nature’s song -- caring when no wool could hide the fires of their destruction from their eyes. Swords and daggers raised to his kind, bullets delivered to the heart of animals pretty for their fur or feathers, had made the spirit harsh, a violent fire where once had been a gentle ember; cynicism had become him, distrust his throne, suspicion the armour at his brow. Humans had proven themselves conceited, swollen-bellied with their own importance, and so he had not cared for them.
Until Ruby Rose had stumbled into his home, scratched from temple to toe and determined to scour the earth for a mother long lost to her.
Thought of her had troubled Aras from dawn til dusk -- how had she come to find such bravery, such spirit, where he had assumed humanity to be self-obsessed, spineless? How had such strife come to her doorstep that she, a mere cub, sought to find the dead and cleave open the belly of the earth to find what was hers where no adult followed in her wake? Had he delivered her to an empty home, this talk of father and ‘Yang’ as much a front as the neatly painted door to the truth of her world? In the end, the spirit could not bear such doubts -- he had made the trip across glade and grove, traversing the forest as a whisper in the wind, in order to see for himself the truth of the rose.
Besides, he had promised -- distantly, in the far off way of an adult humouring a child they’d little connection with -- to visit. Surely his worries could be disguised as a fulfilled oath, and none would be any the wiser.
The little home reared in the spirit’s view, pleasant enough despite the isolation. Darkness shrouded the windows, moonlight hanging like silver dust from the tiger’s fur. Grimness set to the straight line of the spirit’s maw -- a fool he had been, to make the trip at night! Simply because Ruby had been wandering at this time before did not mean she had made it a habit! A child needed sleep, nestled to the breast of hearth and home, not disturbances from all and sundry, spirit and mortal, obeying the whims of a treacherous heart!
Sounds of approach pricked the tiger’s ears forward, a soft gambol taking to his stride. Perhaps he had been too hasty to dismiss Ruby, perhaps she was as nocturnal as the crow, perhaps--!
The call of a threat soon shattered the tiger’s thoughts, the buoyant light of his heart sinking once more to steel in his chest. Not Ruby. Not Ruby did not soothe his woes, Not Ruby did not cleave those savage doubts. But, as he padded forward, caution the armour fitted to his form, some mote of calm descended, soft and silver and light. This was but a cub -- fiercer than Ruby, baring teeth and clenching fist, but still young, still large in the paws. The steel melted from Aras’ gaze then, all caution shelved as he padded from the undergrowth, a shining tiger unthreatening to a human child.
“...Hello.” he spoke, as though a speaking beast would not inspire terror. “I mean you no harm.”